cuts when they face fiscal stress. These results suggest that using accounting discretion to understate pension funding gaps
can reduce the extent to which states have to engage in other more politically costly actions like increasing taxes or cutting
expenditures in response to financial difficulties.
We conclude our paper by investigating whether there is a relation between states’ future payroll costs and the
extent to which states understate their pension funding gaps. In this analysis we model future payroll costs to be a function
of the reported funding gap, the unreported funding gap, and various control variables for the demand for public service
and the state's economic condition. The reported funding gap is obtained from the financial statements prepared
under the GASB rules. The unreported funding gap is equal to the understatement calculated as we describe above. We
measure states’ future payroll costs over a one, three, and five-year horizon from the year the state sets its pension
assumptions. We find a weak, positive relation between the expenditures on state payrolls in year Tþ1 and the reported
pension funding gaps in year T. However, as we move out in time to year Tþ3 and year Tþ5, we find that this relation
becomes insignificant. These results suggest that states with larger reported pension funding gaps tend to spend more on
employment in the short term. However, over time, states respond to the reported funding gaps and reduce spending on
their employment.
We also find a positive relation between the expenditures on state payrolls in year Tþ1 and the unreported pension
funding gaps in year T. However, unlike our tests of the reported funding gap, we find that the relation between the
unreported funding gap and payroll persists three and five years into the future. These results suggest that by not reporting
the true economic costs of pension obligations, states tend to spend more on labor both in the short and long terms.
In addition, we find that this positive relation is attributable to the understatement related to the design of the GASB rules
and the results are robust to a change specification. Overall, these findings highlight that discretionary actions under the
GASB rules, like distorting expected rates of returns on assets or choosing inappropriate investment smoothing horizons, are
relatively transparent, and thus do not affect employment decisions. In contrast, the non-discretionary portion of the
funding gap understatement masks the true cost of each employee and government officials do not (or cannot) undo the
understatement in their hiring decisions.
Our findings extend the literature on public pensions. The debate on public pensions is driven by the concern that states
use a discount rate that is too large. As a result, states understate their pension funding gaps, resulting in insufficient current
contributions, and hence shift the cost of these plans to future periods and perhaps future generations or force states to
attempt to renege on their pension promises. We find that states are more likely to understate pension funding gaps during
periods of fiscal stress. We also find that funding gap understatements are associated with a reduced likelihood of tax
increases and expenditure cuts during periods of fiscal stress, and that these understatements are associated with future
increases in payroll expenditures. Importantly, the increases in payroll expenditures appear related to the inherent design of
the GASB's rules. Therefore, it is not only the case that the current GASB regime may pose intergenerational fairness issues
(by not requiring sufficient pension contributions), but also that it is associated with policy choices (such as increased labor
expenditures) that have the potential to exacerbate public sector fiscal stress